Blind Without'Em: Difference between revisions
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[[File:velma lost her glasses 9414.jpg|link=Scooby-Doo (animation)|frame|Oooohhhh, where could they be?]]
{{quote|''"My glasses! I can't see a thing without my glasses!"''
|'''Velma''', from the various ''[[Scooby-Doo (animation)|Scooby Doo]]'' shows (whenever they need somebody to be incapacitated)}}
{{quote|''"My glasses! I can't
▲{{quote|''"My glasses! I can't be ''seen'' [[Cool Shades|without my glasses]]!"''|'''[[Johnny Bravo]]''', in a crossover with ''[[Scooby-Doo (animation)|Scooby Doo]]'' (after tripping with the aforementioned and making both drop their glasses; then they pick up each other's)}}
Nobody who wears glasses in TV ever needs them for minor vision correction, except for reading glasses that are worn [[Purely Aesthetic Glasses|mainly to make the character look wise]]. Almost all TV characters with glasses have such bad vision that if they are deprived of their spectacles, they are practically blind—usually hammered home by showing (briefly) the character's uselessly blurry point of view or the character making a [[Blind Mistake]].
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See also [[Nerd Glasses]].
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== Advertising ==
* The woman in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZOeWFBy75A this] Sears Optical Ad, who mistakes a raccoon for her cat. "Come snuggles with momma..."
== Anime
* Mousse in ''[[Ranma ½]]'' is so dependent upon his glasses that without them he can mistake a bright green houseplant for the purple-haired girl he loves. This isn't helped by his tendency to [[The Glasses Come Off|take them off any time he tries to be cool/dramatic]].
* Hida Sayuri in ''[[Best Student Council]]'' has a habit of having her glasses ("megane" in Japanese) [[Dropped Glasses|knocked off]] so that she can meander about the ground mumbling "megane... megane...". Surprisingly, they have only been stepped on once. She's not just Blind Without'Em. She seems to lose all sense-abilities and tunes out the world completely when she loses them. The first episode alone has her apparently patting the same square foot of land saying "megane... megane..." for hours before being fireman-carried home, still in her '''orz''' state.
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* Spanish comic book character Rompetechos is this, but taken to the extreme where he is blind even ''with'' them. 90% of the time he reads something (say, "Escuela de perritos", "Dog School") and he believes it's a very different thing (say, "Escuela de peritos", "School for experts"), which coupled with his very bad temper makes him believe the people in the places where he goes to are mocking him, and this lands him in loads of trouble.
* The version of the Scarecrow/Jonathan Crane appearing in ''[[The Sandman]]'' claims to be this, as demonstrated in a scene where he jumps out in full costume at {{spoiler|Dream and John Dee}}, followed by an apologetic pause to take off his mask and put his glasses back on.
* Brainy Smurf on ''[[The Smurfs]]'' can't see a thing without his glasses. Also true in the animated version.
== Film ==
* One of the iconic drawn-in-the-margins characters of ''Cricket'', a children's magazine, is Zoot, a pygmy shrew who's Blind Without'Em. A good thing too, else he might have caught on too soon that the "puppies and kitties" he'd been hanging around with were actually various insects, worms and snails that he rightly ought to be preying upon! Instead, he became so fond of them that he converted to vegetarianism when he learned the truth.▼
* ''[[Peanuts]]''▼
** Marcie was once told by Peppermint Patty that she would [[The Glasses Gotta Go|look more sophisticated]] with her glasses up on her forehead, resulting in her bumping into walls, a lamppost, etc. Marcie: "Before I became sophisticated, I almost never had headaches."▼
** Averted with Linus, who occasionally donned glasses for a time in the early '60s but seemed to see all right without them, and eventually discarded them entirely.▼
* Conrad, [[Capt'n Crazy|Captn Crazy]]'s brother, is even almost-blind with 'em.▼
* Edgar the Mole from ''[[Once Upon a Forest]]''. He is a mole after all.
* A deleted scene from ''[[
* Brenda in ''[[Adventures in Babysitting]]'', after having her glasses stolen, wanders around the bus station blindly and mistakes a rat for a kitten.
* Averted in ''[[Jurassic Park]]''. At one point, Dennis Nedry loses his glasses. He looks for them for about a second before saying "I can afford more glasses", being in a hurry to catch a ship. His sight is not drastically affected. {{spoiler|However, not having his glasses leaves his eyes vulnerable to the spat venom of the dilophosaurus.}}
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* In a reversal, although not really a subversion, in ''[[Strangers on a Train]]'', Alfred Hitchcock wanted the actress who played Miriam to wear glasses with thick lenses so he could show {{spoiler|her murder}} reflected in them, and to make her resemble another character. The actress, Casey Rogers (billed as Laura Elliott), didn't need glasses, and couldn't see at all with the costume glasses on. She wears the thick lenses for close-up and medium scenes, and plain lenses for long shots, but there are still several scenes where she has to depend on other people to make sure she doesn't trip or stumble when she's wearing the glasses. In the scenes where Miriam goes to the amusement park with two men, she is holding both their arms most of the time because she can't see where she is going.
* In ''[[Guest House Paradiso]]'', Richie donned Eddie's glasses as a disguise. They were both rendered nearly blind as a result.
* [[Black Comedy]] example in ''[[Wild Wild West (film)|Wild Wild West]]''. Artemis Gordon has a device that can project the last thing a murder victim saw before he died, but to do so, he has to ''mount the victim's decapitated head onto the device''. Anyway, at first, the image is very blurry (they can see someone who's obviously General McGrath, but not a paper he's holding) until West notices the victim's glasses on the table and puts them over his eyes. Then they can see the document clearly.
== Literature ==
* Piggy, from ''[[Lord of the Flies]]''. He's almost completely blind without them. {{spoiler|Poor kid never saw that rock coming}}.
* [[Tamora Pierce]]'s Tris, from the ''[[Circle of Magic]]'' series. In a mild variation, she has much worse regular vision, but can see magic better.
* [[
** [[Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (film)|The film
** Paradoxically, Harry's vision is quite good with his glasses on, enough so that he serves as Seeker on the Hogwarts Quidditch team, a position which relies on keen eyesight.
* Princess Andromeda, from ''[[Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms|One Good Knight]]'', has been severely nearsighted since early childhood. However, the Sophont who made her glasses designed them to stay on her face (and they do, unless she chooses to take them off).
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* ''[[Doctor Who]]'' exception: The Fifth and Tenth Doctors both have only minor vision problems. David Tennant admitted in an interview that he had the Doctor wear glasses to give children with glasses a hero.
** In the crossover short ''Time Crash'', the 10th Doctor explicitly states that neither he nor the 5th Doctor need glasses to correct their vision -- [[Purely Aesthetic Glasses|they only wear them to look clever]]. The 1st Doctor occasionally did wear proper glasses to improve his ailing vision.
* Exemplified in ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'' by Geordi LaForge, who actually ''is'' blind without his
* Without this trope, the famous ''[[The Twilight Zone]]'' episode "Time Enough at Last" would have lost some of its zing. It's almost reverse [[Fridge Horror]], though, because you realize that eventually he'll think to stumble his way into an optometrist's and find a pair that works reasonably well. He could also have just found himself a magnifying glass.
** Parodied on ''[[Futurama]]'' with ''The Scary Door'', where the last man on Earth has just lost his glasses.
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* Averted in ''[[New Girl]]''. Jess often wears Glasses but can see just fine without Them too. She even goes entire episodes without needing to use Them.
* ''[[Good Eats]]'': Alton Brown, at least within the mildly-fictionalized confines of the episodes that have plots. In one episode, he loses his glasses in a shipwreck, then washes up on a [[Desert Island]] where he spends several days living off foraged island vegetation, completely unaware that just beyond the trees where he's getting his coconuts one of the major cities of the Hawaiian islands lies within walking distance.
== Music ==
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==
▲* One of the iconic drawn-in-the-margins characters of ''Cricket'', a children's magazine, is Zoot, a pygmy shrew who's Blind Without'Em. A good thing too, else he might have caught on too soon that the "puppies and kitties" he'd been hanging around with were actually various insects, worms and snails that he rightly ought to be preying upon! Instead, he became so fond of them that he converted to vegetarianism when he learned the truth.
▲* ''[[Peanuts]]''
▲** Marcie was once told by Peppermint Patty that she would [[The Glasses Gotta Go|look more sophisticated]] with her glasses up on her forehead, resulting in her bumping into walls, a lamppost, etc. Marcie: "Before I became sophisticated, I almost never had headaches."
▲** Averted with Linus, who occasionally donned glasses for a time in the early '60s but seemed to see all right without them, and eventually discarded them entirely.
▲* Conrad, [[Capt'n Crazy|Captn Crazy]]'s brother, is even almost-blind with 'em.
== Professional Wrestling ==
* Stan Hansen can't see beyond his nose without his glasses on. Stan's legendary stiffness in the ring is attributed to this.
* "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan: The affiable everyman wrestler often wore glasses outside the ring due to his real-life poor eyesight. Several heel color commentators—in particular, Jesse "The Body" Ventura and Bobby "the Brain" Heenan—frequently pointed this out in disdaining Duggan.
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* Phil's teacher Mr. Soggy in ''[[Riddle School]] 3''. {{spoiler|You have to knock his glasses off with the rubber band hidden in the vent.}}
* The [[Courier]] can be this in [[Fallout: New Vegas]] if the player chooses the four eyed trait.
* The Medic from ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'' seems to have this problem. In the part of the video "Meet the Spy", right before the fake Medic puts on his glasses, he's both squinting and slightly cross-eyed, just like someone with a strong prescription would be after taking off his glasses.
== Visual Novels ==
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{{quote|'''Velma:''' My glasses! I can't see without my glasses!
'''Johnny Bravo:''' My glasses! I can't be seen without my glasses! }}
{{quote|'''Velma:''' Jinkies! Everything's Dark! I'VE GONE BLIND!!}}
{{quote|'''Johnny Bravo:''' I'm only going to say this once...[[Punctuated! For! Emphasis!|'''Don't. Touch. The Glasses!''']]}}
* ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]''
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** Professor Frink sometimes loses his glasses too.
** Averted in an episode where Troy McClure is pulled over for reckless driving. His license requires him to wear glasses, but they make him look like a nerd, so we usually never see him with any.
** In "$pringfield", former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger drops his glasses in a toilet while visiting the nuclear power plant. (Smithers assures him as he leaves that they'll keep an eye out for them, but Kissinger knows what happened, he's just too embarrassed to tell him.) Two scenes later, the news reports that he injured himself walking into a flagpole.
* Steve Smith from ''[[American Dad]]'', who's supposed to be far-sighted, is rarely seen without them, but when he breaks them (for instance in fights or when he's been attacked by animals) he usually gets home OK.
* Miss Whoops on ''[[The Mr. Men Show]]''.
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* Mr. Griff on ''[[Stanley]]'' states that he can't see a thing without his glasses.
* On ''[[Doc McStuffins]]'', the character Hallie the hippo makes this statement, as the titular Doc takes away her glasses supposedly to give her an eye exam, but actually to hide the fact that she's in a room that's decorated for a surprise birthday party (but isn't quite ready yet). We are, however, given a point-of-view shot of what Hallie sees and it's clear that things are just blurry, like someone with nearsightedness. She probably could have figured it out if Doc and the others hadn't continued to keep her distracted.
* An episode of ''[[Celebrity Deathmatch]]'' where Mills Lane and Stacy Cornbread take over in the announcers' booth (due to Nick and Johnny being arrested) shows that Mills is badly nearsighted without his glasses. Good thing he's usually very close to where he's supposed to be.
* In the ''[[Futurama]]'' episode "The Problem With Popplers", the Omnicronians are almost fooled when Zapp Brannigan tries to substitute an ape for Leela. Leela at first thinks this is because they have a hard time telling any creatures other than their own species apart, but seeing as Lrrr did indeed only figure it out when he used his glasses to get a better look, it seems bad eyesight may be at least partially to blame.
* Zummi from ''[[Adventures of the Gummi Bears]]''. In one episode, he loses them, and spends half the episode crawling around blinded until he lucks out and finds them.
== Real Life ==
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* One of the tests required to obtain a driver's license in practically every jurisdiction is a vision test. If you require the use of glasses or contact lenses to pass the test, your license will make note of that fact (usually with a code appended to your license number, or a printed endorsement on the license stating "Corrective Lens" or something similar). For a driver with vision restrictions, driving without correction constitutes a moving violation and will get you ticketed.
** Shows up every season of [[Canada's Worst Driver]]; it's mentioned only when a driver fails to fullfil this.
* [[Christopher Lambert]] has Myopia and is almost entirely blind without his Glasses. Since he cannot wear contacts, he is often forced to act while unable to see anything clearly (Making the fact that almost all his roles require fighting or some form of strenuous physical activity impressive). This is also the reason behind his trademark intense gaze as he is really just trying to see whats in front of him.
* Possibly led to the death of FBI Agent Ben Grogan in the infamous 1986 FBI Miami shootout. Gorgon was the best trained and experienced with firearms among present officers, but lost his glasses in a crash at the start of the confrontation. How bad Grogan's vision actually was is disputed, one of the few points of debate in the well documented case, but losing his glasses didn't help.
* Admiral Willis "Ching" Lee was an ''extremely'' talented marksman (he eventually ran out of room for his medals, which included 5 Olympic golds ''from one year'') but an accident with homemade explosives in his youth rendered him dependent on his glasses.
{{reflist}}
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